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His specialty is static apnea: holding your breath while remaining immobile in a swimming pool. It requires some of same skills as being buried alive for a week, Mr. Blaine said: “It’s all in your mind. You’ve got to stay calm and slow everything down.”
The guy can hold his breath for sixteen minutes; here is the article, interesting throughout. He is also versatile:
As a self-described endurance artist, he’d spent 35 hours atop a 105-foot pole and survived a week buried in a coffin. He’d fasted for 44 days in a box suspended over the Thames, a nutritional experiment that was written up in The New England Journal of Medicine (with Mr. Blaine listed as a co-author).
Nor had I known this:
Immersing the face in water produces a protective action in humans similar to that in dolphins, seals, otters and whales. Called the mammalian diving reflex, it quickly lowers the heart rate and then constricts blood vessels in the limbs so that blood is reserved for the heart and the brain.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 22, 2008 at 11:31 AM in Sports | Permalink
Comments
He also survived being tormented with Big Macs attached to remote control helicopters during the Thames stunt. Though, perhaps it had the opposite effect...
Posted by: Naadir Jeewa at Apr 22, 2008 12:18:40 PM
Note that the 16 min. figure is after breathing oxygen.
Posted by: DB at Apr 22, 2008 12:22:41 PM
Nature imitates art - read Kafka's The Hunger Artist
Posted by: Ak Mike at Apr 22, 2008 12:47:57 PM
David Blaine is also a magician and entertainer. The New England Journal of Medicine should be less willing to indulge the shtick of performers. David Blaine's feats are more likely well crafted illusions than actual feats of endurance.
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Apr 22, 2008 1:27:33 PM
but...but...but...he can hover, rex! I saw it on TV!
Posted by: shawn at Apr 22, 2008 1:42:57 PM
Not so fast about art and life: "It may come as a surprise that “A Hunger Artist” is partially based on the real historical phenomenon of 'professional fasting.'" See
http://www.answers.com/topic/a-hunger-artist-story-6
Posted by: mae at Apr 22, 2008 1:43:20 PM
Ever seen babies happily 'swimming' under water? That's the mammalian diving reflex. Apparently, we lose it as we age and our learnt behaviour takes over.
Posted by: Clinton McMurray at Apr 22, 2008 2:20:44 PM
Ever seen babies happily 'swimming' under water? That's the mammalian diving reflex. Apparently, we lose it as we age and our learnt behaviour takes over.
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Ever seen babies happily 'swimming' under water? That's the mammalian diving reflex. Apparently, we lose it as we age and our learnt behaviour takes over.
No, that's not the diving reflex. That's another reflex, the infant "swimming" response, which is common to all infant mammals -- aquatic or not -- and is indeed lost after a short period. The diving reflex is found in all vertebrates and is lifelong. The claim that it's "similar to that in dolphins, seals, otters and whales" is highly misleading, because this reflex varies in degree depending on the lifestyle and evolutionary background of the animal, being more pronounced in aquatic and diving animals. Humans display it to an extent common to other terrestrial animals (about like dogs, for instance, although untrained dogs can hold their breath somewhat longer than untrained humans).
Posted by: anthrosciguy at Apr 22, 2008 6:27:52 PM
BTW, the article also is mistaken when they claim the diving reflex was "recently rediscovered", unless they're talking geological time. The diving reflex, and the fact that it's found in humans as well as non-human animals, has been known for over 70 years. That the writer or some selected people were ignorant of it all this time doesn't really mean that their finding out about it constitutes its being "rediscovered". :)
Posted by: anthrosciguy at Apr 22, 2008 6:32:22 PM
I once held my breath for 4 minutes sitting in a chair, I wonder how long I could go for underwater. Actually I got little red spots all over my extremities, it was scary and I promised myself not to do it again.
Posted by: Paul N at Apr 22, 2008 9:09:03 PM
You might find the following book interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-at-Extremes-Science-Survival/dp/0520234200/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208938305&sr=8-2
The author discusses the mammalian diving reflex and plenty of other interesting topics.
Posted by: Eric at Apr 23, 2008 4:13:39 AM
current world record in static apnea (after breathing normal air not oxygen as Mr.Blaine)
9min 8 sec
http://www.aida-international.org/
reported times of static apnea after breathing pure oxygen : around 20 minutes
Posted by: juka at Apr 23, 2008 9:07:29 AM
